or because they don't care if they can't get health care as long as black people and immigrants can't get it either.

Just to "other" people: POC, and liberals, and poor people.

"They don't think."
Period. At least not enough.

Seriously. I think a significant amount of R's' IQ lies below the 100 percentile.

I also think RWers have culturally induced mental disorders. And the #1 thing we're fighting is their ignorance and bigotry.

In 2016, writing in the Daily Beast Ana Marie Cox observed, “Trump and Carson are winning a huge slice of the GOP base because of prideful ignorance, which to voters signifies not just a rejection of the establishment or elites but a release from the hard work of having to think.”

"Republicans adopted an anti-intellectual strategy. Political historians have noted the long-term political consequences of Richard Nixon’s southern strategy which peeled Southern white voters — particularly evangelical Christians — away from the Democratic Party. What hasn’t received as much attention is the fact that southern evangelicals are not intellectual."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-burnett/the-birth-of-the-stupid-p_b_10127988.html


Those whose minds are the most mediocre are entrenched in their willful ignorance - Chervilant

Mt instinct is that the "fear" is expressed in relation to a clear and present danger, or one perceived as such, whereas something like health care requires thinking beyond the present moment.

Another possibility is that they are only aware of dangers that are shouted at them via their media. RW sources do not talk about what repealing the AMA, or the GOP tax plan, will really do to them, but do sound off about ebola, immigrants, and other fantastic fears. Same thing with firearms: RW press will scream about the Gubmint coming for the guns, but downplay the number and provenance of mass shootings.

-- Mal

they're examining here. Environmental influences are also huge, but they act on the basic material, and of course ideology forms later. Conservatives preschoolers can be readily identified by characteristics that are stronger in conservatives, including caution, suspicion, timidity, etc.

Characteristics that presumably once provided a real survival advantage in the days when the tall grass hid bears and tigers or when the strangers showing up on the other side of the river might carry an illness that could wipe out an entire village.

But wow: "But if they had instead just imagined being completely physically safe, the Republicans became significantly more liberal — their positions on social attitudes were much more like the Democratic respondents. And on the issue of social change in general, the Republicans’ attitudes were now indistinguishable from the Democrats. ... The boiling water of our social and political attitudes, it seems, can be turned up or down by changing how physically safe we feel."

I knew feeling more and less secure in general moved everyone more left or right, but this is a lot more.

and instead, help them feel safe and secure.

Problem with that is our own natural desire to punish them with ridicule, or coerce them into agreeing with us. In doing that we only shoot ourselves in the foot.

Don't get combative with conservatives. That just makes them more conservative, and defeats the very thing you would like to accomplish.

The only question is, are liberals smart enough to do the effective thing? Or will liberals, too, be slaves to our gut reactions toward conservatives?

they like provoke violence. When I attend ant-moron rallies the "proud boys" (alt right) taunt the peaceful protesters. We are smart enough to not fall for it despite the local police seemimgly happy to allow violence...and this is in BLUE southern CA!

It's coming at them from everywhere: people of color, people of different religions, sexual orientation, gender...it's so easy to just scare them with something else.

Just when you think you have made them feel safe about something ... the GOP fear machine manufactures a new threat. "Oh, gay marriage isn't a threat to me...maybe it's ok...holy shit transgender people in restrooms!!!"

If they are doing studies that show some 4 yr olds have a greater sense of fear that others and can track that 20 yrs later...being nice and making them feel safe today isn't going to cut it. You need to go back to when that 4 yr old was 2-3 and make them feel safe so they have less fear. You need to nip that fear early.

Seriously. I am.

Now, how to talk to conservatives so they feel safe? Too late, waste of time, to characterize evil arch-witch Hillary as really just a white Christian woman like them who loves playing with for her grandchildren?

It was me, my wife and my mother - who after remarrying has fallen into the Faux News crowd. My wife starts reading the article out loud; about 1/3 of the way in my mother says dismissively, "This sounds like it's written by liberals." That set me off - "Why? Because it sounds intelligent?"

It did not go well, not even after everyone calmed down a bit and I tried to explain the social psychology research and the lesson that we all have non-rational biases in our moral judgments. Along the way I learned that she won't defend Trump the man but "he is doing some good things" and when I challenged her to name one, she mentioned his efforts on immigration (and categorically denied any ill effects on "Dreamers" - "they're only going after the bad ones&quot .

The next day I managed to hold my tongue as we listened to the tale of one of her husband's relatives, who is dealing with a lot of hassles getting his new wife into the US from Mexico. Part of the story was that the election meant the rules changed, making everything suddenly more complicated and time-consuming. I wanted to say (sarcastically) that she was right, I feel so much safer now...

Jeff Ross Roasts the Border. I'm not sure why they believe they are only going after bad ones when refugees are being kept out .

At the university where I then taught there was a lot of discussion about how to deal with the Trump era and all the DACA students on our campus. A Republican colleague (universally-recognized as an all-around nice guy) said complacently that Trump wouldn't do anything to DACA students, the deportations would focus on the criminals. I'm thinking the opposite, they'll go after low-hanging fruit, and this is a population that is well-identified as in technical violation of immigration law. That's the easiest way to deliver for the base.

I'm scared of a dick with a gun killing me.

Which feeds their wholesale acceptance of hypocrisy. The conservative mind tends towards binary decisions - 100% right or 100% wrong - there is no middle ground. They don't accept partial solutions, doing something that fixes part of a problem isn't worth it to them (unless it's their idea).